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Naïve arrogance keeps too many Americans from seeing that China has become a tech powerhouse. China has a credible path to gaining technological parity (and in some cases, superiority) in military applications.

Yet too many believe all the US needs to do is to keep the CCP from stealing American technologies (essential – yes, sufficient – no). They have not accepted the fact that the US trails in key technologies and risks falling behind in others. They don’t fully appreciate how harmful America losing its innovative edge would be to its prosperity and security, now and in the future.

Protecting our national security is the Department's top priority. National security encompasses the national defense, foreign intelligence and counterintelligence, international and internal security, and foreign relations. This includes countering terrorism; combating espionage and economic espionage conducted for the benefit of any foreign government, foreign instrumentality, or foreign agent; enforcing export controls and sanctions; and disrupting cyber threats that are perpetrated by nation states, terrorists, or their agents or proxies.

When national security issues arise during a criminal prosecution, they must be resolved through careful coordination by the Department of Justice (Department) with high level officials from the intelligence, military and foreign affairs communities. In addition, the Attorney General, or the Attorney General's designee, has certain statutory authority and obligations related to national security prosecutions.That authority and those obligations may be properly exercised and met only with appropriate coordination within the Department by the respective United States Attorneys' Offices (USAOs).

Protecting our nation from those who would do us harm is the first and most important responsibility of Congress. That means supporting our military with top notch state-of-the-art military equipment, weapons, and gear as well as treating them with the respect they deserve when they serve and when they return home. Protecting America and democracies also means both quickly and correctly assessing conflicts around the world and deciding how best to respond either diplomatically or militarily, or with a combination of appropriate and effective responses.

In an increasingly interconnected global economy with rapid advances in technology, America also faces new kinds of threats to our security—cyberattacks and disinformation operations, malign foreign influence campaigns, and coordinated efforts to damage our economy and harm our democracy.

Description The goal of the government is to prevent societal disruption brought on by a crisis or calamity. It is studying the threats, how to stop them, and what to do in the event of a tragedy through its national security strategy. When one or more of our nation's critical interests are jeopardised, national security is at risk. These interests include: • Territorial security, which would be threatened by a military occupation as well as by prolonged flooding • economic security • ecological security • physical security • social and political stability • disruptions to online financial transactions due to major internet or electrical outages; damage to the environment caused by pollution or extreme heat or drought • violations Importance of national security Every country is threatened. These dangers can be psychological, such as hostility from a neighbouring country, infiltration by a terrorist organisation, or changes in the world economy that harm the well being of the country. Threats can also be natural, like hurricanes or pandemics of a particular virus. Any threat compromises a country's authority and jeopardises its stability. The national security sector offers defences against such hazards. In addition to citizens, national institutions' financial stability is protected by national security. National defence has been a pillar of American policy at least since 1947, when President Harry S. The National Security Act was enacted by Truman. In addition to other things, this legislation established the secretary of defence cabinet position, which oversaw all military branches. The distinction between national security and international security is significant. To ensure national security, a country's government must take autonomous action to protect its citizens from threats. A key tenet of institutions like the United Nations is to ensure that all countries can live in peace and stability; this is what is meant by global security. Two of the key responsibilities of national security are the detection of prospective threats and the planning of the proper response. In this article, the top five threats to national security will be discussed, along with information on how the various governments are responding to them. Benefits of national security The majority of news stories focus on external attacks, but insider threats can be far more detrimental because they can compromise priceless intellectual property and even endanger national security. Although WikiLeaks is a name we are all acquainted with, few businesses have actually faced the true threat posed by insider threats. Would you know if a worker was accessing financial data that may be used for insider trading, publishing secret information covertly, or transmitting important product blueprints to rival companies? Organizations may recognise and counteract these inside risks as well as many more by spotting the following with the help of security intelligence solutions: • Data loss • such as sensitive data being sent to unauthorised recipients • VoIP toll fraud • application configuration difficulties • such as privileged access exceptions • application performance concerns • such as loss of service or overuse, are all examples of unauthorised application access or usage. Recently, a multibillion dollar company that manufactures branded consumer goods used their SI solution to uncover an attempt at data exfiltration by a reliable employee in search of financial benefit. Although they were unable to pinpoint the source, the company's leaders felt that its intellectual property was being stolen. They were able to find the data breach and stop the employee right away when they used flow-based network activity monitoring to the case. They could even go down and observe the precise emails the employee sent to the third party using his individual email account according to application content capture (through Deep Packet Inspection, or DPI). This stopped the issue from getting worse and potentially costing the company millions of dollars in damage. Conclusion Beyond merely maintaining domestic order, national security is relevant and important. Its importance extends to the health and prosperity of the people who make up the population as well as the relationships between all nations on a regional and international scale.

The Senate appropriators also take issue with NNSA’s invocation of “requirements” to justify budget increases. They point out that NNSA lab directors have for over two decades certified annually that the nuclear stockpile remains reliable, despite NNSA not meeting all its declared requirements during this period. “As such, the blanket requirements phrase, devoid of further explanation, has little meaning to the [Appropriations] Committee, especially as the agency’s projects’ and programs’ costs and schedules continue to experience growth and delays,” they argue.

They propose that NNSA produce a rank-ordered list of the most important infrastructure projects needed over the next two decades, and that it be prohibited from spending 20% of its budget until it provides the list to Congress.

As politics and competition remain at the forefront of the international stage, nuclear nonproliferation strategies need to be examined—not only by the great power states, but by all states—to prevent a future breakout of nuclear weapon acquisition. The three great power states, the US, Russia, and China, arguably would not wish to see their relative power diminished across their regional spheres of influence by a spread of nuclear weapons. Additionally, nonnuclear states would not want to see rival neighbors acquire nuclear arms and potentially gain a method of coercion over them. Despite this common inclination to prefer nonproliferation, concerns about a future breakout remain at the forefront of government activity and academic thought. In an Institute for Defense Analysis report, researchers cataloged 52 countries with some level of nuclear technical capability and categorized them by level of nuclear latency from nil to serial weapons production potential.1 Why have certain countries remained under the threshold? What caused other states to cross the threshold? Knowing those key factors, how can the international community prevent future nuclear proliferation? In this paper, I look at three primary theoretical models of nuclear proliferation—Security Concerns, Domestic Politics, and Norms—and argue that these models inform why states seek nuclear weapons more accurately when applied together as distinct pressures on a state instead of as separate instances of reasoning. This theoretical combination of models is then applied to India’s proliferation case to show how each model provided positive or negative pressure toward its decision to seek nuclear weapons or abstain.

(Thomas, “The New Rules: Leadership Fatigue Puts U.S., and Globalization, at Crossroads,” 3-7-11, ) //SH

Let me be more blunt: As the guardian of globalization, the U.S. military has been the greatest force for peace the world has ever known. Had America been removed from the global dynamics that governed the 20th century, the mass murder never would have ended. Indeed, it's entirely conceivable there would now be no identifiable human civilization left, once nuclear weapons entered the killing equation. But the world did not keep sliding down that path of perpetual war. Instead, America stepped up and changed everything by ushering in our now-perpetual great-power peace. We introduced the international liberal trade order known as globalization and played loyal Leviathan over its spread. What resulted was the collapse of empires, an explosion of democracy, the persistent spread of human rights, the liberation of women, the doubling of life expectancy, a roughly 10-fold increase in adjusted global GDP and a profound and persistent reduction in battle deaths from state-based conflicts. That is what American "hubris" actually delivered. Please remember that the next time some TV pundit sells you the image of "unbridled" American military power as the cause of global disorder instead of its cure. With self-deprecation bordering on self-loathing, we now imagine a post-American world that is anything but. Just watch who scatters and who steps up as the Facebook revolutions erupt across the Arab world. While we might imagine ourselves the status quo power, we remain the world's most vigorously revisionist force. As for the sheer "evil" that is our military-industrial complex, again, let's examine what the world looked like before that establishment reared its ugly head. The last great period of global structural change was the first half of the 20th century, a period that saw a death toll of about 100 million across two world wars. That comes to an average of 2 million deaths a year in a world of approximately 2 billion souls. Today, with far more comprehensive worldwide reporting, researchers report an average of less than 100,000 battle deaths annually in a world fast approaching 7 billion people. Though admittedly crude, these calculations suggest a 90 percent absolute drop and a 99 percent relative drop in deaths due to war. We are clearly headed for a world order characterized by multipolarity, something the American-birthed system was designed to both encourage and accommodate. But given how things turned out the last time we collectively faced such a fluid structure, we would do well to keep U.S. power, in all of its forms, deeply embedded in the geometry to come.

peculiar cognitive dissonance seems to have taken hold in the world. The Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—led and propped up by the United States—has reminded the world that the international order is, if anything, more dependent on American military, economic, and financial might now than only a few years ago. Yet everywhere you turn, there is a sense that the U.S. is in some form of terminal decline; too divided, incoherent, violent, and dysfunctional to sustain its Pax Americana. Moscow and Beijing seem to think that the great American unwinding has already begun, while in Europe, officials worry about a sudden American collapse. “Do we talk about it?” Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador to Syria who remains well connected within Europe’s diplomatic network, told me, somewhat indignantly, after I asked whether an American implosion was ever discussed at the highest levels of government. “We never stop talking about it.” Again and again, when I spoke with officials, diplomats, politicians, and aides in Britain and Europe over the past few weeks, the same message came back. “It’s weighing on people’s minds, big time,” one senior European Union official told me, speaking, like most of those I interviewed, on condition of anonymity to freely discuss their concerns. From outside the U.S., many now see in America only relentless mass shootings, political dysfunction, social division, and the looming presence of Donald Trump. All of this seems to add up in the collective imagination to an impression of a country on the brink, meeting all the conditions for a descent into civil unrest. Many Europeans have long considered American decline an inevitability and have looked to prepare themselves for such an eventuality. Pushed by Germany and France, the EU has sought out trade and energy deals with rival global powers, including Russia and China. The idea was that as the U.S. disengaged from Europe, the EU would step up. But then Russia invaded Ukraine, and everything changed. Suddenly, Europe’s grand strategy was in tatters, and American strength seemed to reassert itself. Europe discovered it had not become more independent from the U.S. but more dependent on it. In fact, Europe was dependent on everyone: Russia for its energy, China for its trade, America for its security. In pursuing a slow, cautious disengagement from the U.S., Europe found itself in the worst of all worlds. And in a desperate bid to reverse out of the mess, it was forced to rush back into the arms of the very leviathan it fears might be not only slowly losing its power but in danger of suddenly imploding. This, then, is the difficult situation of America’s protectorates today. Worried about the decline of the U.S., much of the American-led world has clung even more tightly to Washington than before. In Asia, the U.S. remains the only power capable of balancing against China’s bid for regional hegemony. In Europe, something similar is true with regard to Russia. To the continent’s eternal shame, as one senior British official told me, the apparently divided, dysfunctional, and declining power of the U.S. has still managed to send drastically more lethal aid to save a European democracy than any other NATO power. Such is America’s continuing dominance, in fact, that the world’s fixation on the idea of its impending demise seems both a dramatic overreaction and a dramatic underreaction. The depth of America’s military-industrial complex and the scale of its imperial bureaucracy mean that they are simply too heavy for a single president or Congress to remove in one go. To an extraordinary degree, American power has been vaccinated against its own political dysfunction, as Trump’s time in office showed. And yet the very weight of this Pax Americana means that if the vaccine ever stopped working, the consequences would be globally historic. In Poland and Japan, Taiwan and Ukraine, the very basis of the world order today rests on American supremacy. But besides talking about the fragility of these foundations, no one is actually doing anything to secure them.

According to this theory, a hegemon creates a stable international economic order characterized by market openness but its decline results in global instability. This hegemonic effect of open trade benefits all participants, especially, weaker states that do not have any burden of public goods. In this sense, global economic stability is born out of hegemony and provides provision of collective public goods and in doing so facilitates a stable international system.

The motivation to create an economic openness lie in the interest of the hegemon – it has the largest economy and so benefits most from open markets. In addition, only hegemons have the material capability (political and military) to provide public goods and induce other states to embrace open trade. [4]

norm to its former allies and enemies aftermath the second world war that led to the formation of the current liberal economic world order provides an explanation as to why in spite of US’ relative decline there is continuity for America’s liberal economic order. The rising challenger China can be considered to have been socialized – it has accepted US led international norms, and participates in various International Organizations. Thus, it makes less sense for China to wage war against the hegemon whose ideals it has internalized. According to this theory, a hegemon creates a stable international economic order characterized by market openness but its decline results in global instability. This hegemonic effect of open trade benefits all participants, especially, weaker states that do not have any burden of public goods. In this sense, global economic stability is born out of hegemony and provides provision of collective public goods and in doing so facilitates a stable international system. The motivation to create an economic openness lie in the interest of the hegemon – it has the largest economy and so benefits most from open markets. In addition, only hegemons have the material capability (political and military) to provide public goods and induce other states to embrace open trade. By virtue of the Hegemonic Stability Theory, the hegemon is an important element in creation and maintenance of the international system. As stated earlier, open trade benefits all participants, even the rising challengers that are accommodated in the system. In contemporary world politics, China is the fastest rising power and it is also reaping the benefits of the open economic order created by the US. By participating in the globalized economy, China has earned a comparative advantage in labor-market and its economy has been growing. On top of that China is an export-based economy and thus, it has very little incentive to jeopardize this benefit by engaging with the hegemon and thereby disrupting the order. In his article, Artur Stein has argued that decline in hegemony does not bring about a complete collapse of the trade regime as long as hegemonic power is committed to economic openness. Taking these two points in consideration, it can be argued that it is not in the interest of China to challenge US hegemony. On account, likelihood of war is averted.

This does not necessarily mean that the US is in systemic decline, but it encompasses a trend that appears to be negative and perhaps alarming. Although the US still possesses incomparable military prowess and its economy remains the world’s largest, the once seemingly indomitable chasm that separated America from anyone else is narrowing. Thus, the global distribution of power is shifting, and the inevitable result will be a world that is less peaceful, liberal and prosperous, burdened by a dearth of effective conflict regulation. Over the past two decades, no other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military. Under these circumstances, motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have bandwagoned with US hegemony and accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most of Western Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo that has tended to mute great power conflicts. However, as the hegemony that drew these powers together withers, so will the pulling power behind the US alliance. The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse, American interests and influence can be more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be harder to avoid. As history attests, power decline and redistribution result in military confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century America’s emergence as a regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the increase in US power and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the notion that Britain ‘rules the waves.’ Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western Hemisphere’s security to become the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with democracy and rule of law. Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics: enforcement of property rights, constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of equal opportunities for broad segments of society. As a result of such political stability, free markets, liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have appeared. And, with this, many countries have sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating stable and cooperative relations. However, what will happen to these advances as America’s influence declines? Given that America’s authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people across much of Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer to this question could affect global society in a profoundly detrimental way. Public imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-hegemonic world would return to the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and strategic rivalry. Furthermore, multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO might give way to regional organisations. For example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward to fill the vacuum left by Washington’s withering leadership to pursue their own visions of regional political and economic orders. Free markets would become more politicised — and, well, less free — and major powers would compete for supremacy. Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western European economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973). A world without American hegemony is one where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal international system is supplanted by an authoritarian one, and trade protectionism devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one possibility we can forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.

There is another reason why failure is not an option in Ukraine, and it is the next and possibly imminent existential priority: Taiwan. China appears increasingly determined to “reunify” Taiwan with the mainland for symbolic, political, economic, and strategic reasons. Symbolically, the Chinese Communist Party’s rulers claim that annexing Taiwan would end a long humiliation and restore China’s rightful status as the dominant power in Asia. Politically, the Chinese leadership’s absorption of Taiwan would extinguish the living proof that a Chinese society can govern itself as a liberal democracy. Economically, Taiwan hosts the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing facilities, producing roughly 90 percent of the world’s most powerful chips. And strategically, taking Taiwan would enable China to break past the first island chain—the first chain of archipelagoes out from the East Asian continental mainland—and assert control over not only the South China Sea and its passageways to the Indian Ocean but also the entire western Pacific. China could then push the United States out of Asia and become the hegemon of the Indo-Pacific. This prospect horrifies the countries of the region, beginning with Washington’s vital democratic partner in East Asia, Japan. But if conquest looks inevitable or if Taiwan eventually falls, most regional states will opt to ride the wave of China’s hegemonic ascent rather than be drowned by it. For this reason, preserving Taiwan’s autonomy as a thriving democracy is an overriding strategic priority not just for the region but for the entire world. If Taiwan can maintain its current course of moderation, avoiding any hint of movement toward de jure independence, and if China can be deterred from attacking Taiwan, crucial time will be purchased for China to change politically. With a rapidly shrinking and aging population and huge contradictions in its excessively state-dominated economy, China will increasingly face deep domestic challenges that may press it in the direction of pragmatism, reform, and a more enlightened vision of what constitutes national greatness. To secure a democratic Taiwan, the United States and its strategic partners—including Australia, Japan, and allies in Europe—must avoid pointless provocation. This means adhering to the diplomatic status quo, including the “one China” policy, and avoiding the temptation to take steps such as announcing formal diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, which would be symbolically gratifying but would back China’s leaders into a corner. It will also be important for Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s successor to continue her stance of pragmatism and restraint in cross-strait relations. Preserving U.S. military strength is vital to keeping democracies secure. At the same time, both the United States and Taiwan must address the deteriorating military balance with Beijing. China is modernizing militarily, acquiring the ships and weapons systems it would need to mount a cross-strait invasion of Taiwan. It is stepping up disinformation in Taiwan, with a continuous barrage of “news” and social media messages smearing Taiwan’s democracy, trying to tilt its politics toward Beijing-friendly politicians, and portraying other democracies as weak and incompetent. Beijing is also escalating military intimidation, including repeated incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. With support from Japan, the United States, and Europe, Taiwan needs to reshuffle this strategic picture. That means more emphasis on asymmetric warfare and larger military reserves. Above all, it means spending more on defense, which, at roughly 2.1 percent of GDP, is still a fraction of the 5.2 percent Taiwan spent in 1990. Finally, Taiwan could change the dynamic of the political impasse with a dramatic gesture. Taking a page from the National Unification Guidelines adopted by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui in 1991, Taiwan could establish that as a condition for negotiations on the future shape of its sovereignty, mainland China would have to be a democracy and guarantee fundamental human rights to its citizens. This would signal to the people of mainland China that the real obstacle to dialogue is China’s authoritarian Communist Party, which does not respect the rule of law or political accountability and, therefore, as it showed in Hong Kong, cannot credibly commit to “one country, two systems.” A U.S. information campaign could then puncture Beijing’s social media firewall to amplify this message to the Chinese people.

There is no more important priority than ensuring that Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine’s democracy ends in Moscow’s defeat. In the four months following Russia’s February 24 invasion, the United States committed $5.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine, including heavy artillery, drones, missiles, and aircraft. But U.S. delivery of that military aid has often been slow, and some of Ukraine’s requests for advanced weapons have not been met. Meanwhile, Russia has continued its withering assault. Led by the United States, the NATO alliance must provide Ukraine with the arms, ammunition, and intelligence it needs to successfully counter Russian aggression. Victory is not just imperative to protect the Ukrainians’ right to self-governance. How the war ends will prompt other countries to draw conclusions about which way global politics is heading and which type of political system has the greater will and tenacity. If Ukraine emerges from this conflict substantially free and secure, with its prewar territory intact and with aid and investment flowing in to rebuild, several powerful lessons will become clear. Bystanders will realize that democracy is not a weak system but provides the legitimacy, solidarity, and steadfastness necessary for victory, just as it did for the United Kingdom in World War II. The world will also see that the United States, its European allies, and their democratic partners will sacrifice to help an embattled democracy defend itself and to reaffirm the most vital principle of the international order, that territorial aggression will not stand. Finally, it will demonstrate the disastrous incompetence and miscalculation of Putin’s authoritarian state and thus illustrate a larger lesson: when leaders are not constrained by checks and balances and alternative flows of information, they are prone to ruinous blunders.

At 9:26 p.m. on 24 June 1950 Truman, who was vacationing in Independence, Missouri, received a telephone call from Acheson informing him that DPRK forces had staged a full-scale military invasion of the ROK. They agreed that the president would not return until the next day and the State Department would proceed with plans to refer the matter to the United Nations. This latter decision was entirely consistent with past American policy. US Department of the Army contingency plans provided for such action in the unlikely event of a DPRK assault. In his Press Club speech, Acheson also stated that if open military aggression occurred beyond the US “defensive perimeter”, “the initial reliance must be on the people attacked to resist it and then upon the commitments of the entire civilized world under the Charter of the United Nations”.Footnote2 Truman and Acheson were in complete agreement that the United States should provide assistance to the ROK only under the auspices of the United Nations.Footnote3 A desire to avoid the direct and unilateral application of US military power explains in part the administration’s decision to request action at the Security Council. Truman believed that United Nations support for the ROK would bolster morale in the ROK and greatly improve the ability for local self-defense. Abundant evidence exists supporting the conclusion that Truman, from the start of conflict, viewed the Korean War from a global perspective, making frequent references to the necessity of preventing the collapse of the United Nations and avoiding a new world war (Leffler Citation1992, 361; Hamby Citation1995, 535–37; Stueck Citation1995, 43–44). As for the ROK itself, the United States had to intervene to uphold its global credibility and prestige because along with the United Nations, it had sponsored creation of the ROK (Stueck Citation1981, 186; Ferrell Citation1983, 115; MacDonald Citation1986, 30). Truman and his advisors were convinced that the Soviet Union had ordered the DPRK’s attack, but initially feared that its purpose was to divert US attention prior to a military assault in Europe. They certainly never considered that the North Koreans might have their own reasons for using military means to reunite their nation. Soviet documents have provided unequivocal evidence that the DPRK, contrary to its continuing denials, was responsible for launching a long-planned invasion. During 1949, Stalin consistently had refused to approve Kim Il Sung’s persistent requests to authorize an attack on the ROK. He believed that the DPRK still lacked military superiority over the ROK. That fall, however, the Communist victory in China placed pressure on the Soviet leader to show support for the same outcome in Korea. In January 1950, Stalin in fact discussed Kim Il Sung’s plans with him personally in Moscow, but he was not ready to give final consent. At that time, he did authorize a major expansion of DPRK’s military capabilities. When they met again in April, Kim Il Sung persuaded Stalin that military victory would be quick and easy, largely because of support from southern guerrillas and an expected popular uprising against Rhee’s regime. Stalin still feared US military intervention, advising Kim Il Sung that he could stage his invasion only if China’s Mao Zedong approved. In May, Kim went to Beijing to gain Chinese consent. Significantly, Mao Zedong also voiced concern that the United States would act to defend the ROK, but he gave his reluctant approval as well (Matray Citation2002a, 39–48). Reports from the ROK immediately following the attack cast serious doubts on whether the United States could limit its involvement in the conflict. John J. Muccio, US ambassador to the ROK, cabled Washington that “the North Koreans are engaged in an all-out offensive to subjugate South Korea”. “Future course of hostilities”, he sternly warned, “may depend largely on whether [the] US will or will not give adequate assistance”. General Douglas MacArthur, the US occupation commander in Japan, also emphasized that the situation was grave and might require American military intervention when he requested authorization to send more supplies to the ROK.Footnote4 In Moscow, US diplomatic representatives were more vehement in urging Washington to adopt a decisive course of action. The Embassy staff members insisted that “this aggressive DPRK military move … represents clear-cut Soviet challenge which in our considered opinion US should answer firmly and swiftly as it constitutes direct threat to our leadership of free world against Soviet Communist imperialism”. Any delay, the cable warned, only would hasten the collapse of the ROK and encourage Stalin to embark on similar adventures elsewhere. If the United States acted quickly and with resolve, however, Moscow might forsake further aggressive action.Footnote5 Despite such advice, US policymakers emphasized restraint on the morning of 25 June in searching for an appropriate response to the crisis. For example, the State Department formulated a list of policy alternatives that included such limited options as sending the ROK all essential equipment and permitting American advisors to remain with the ROK army. If necessary, the United States would utilize naval and air power to establish a protective zone around the ROK capital at Seoul for the evacuation of American personnel. If the ROK’s survival demanded drastic action, the United States might deploy ground forces to “Stabilize [sic] the combat situation including if feasible the restoration of original boundaries at 38 degrees parallel”. Significantly, the State Department recommended that MacArthur immediately dispatch a survey team to the ROK to determine the minimum amount of assistance required to enable the ROK to defend itself without weakening the security of Japan.Footnote6 That evening, Truman, having returned to Washington, discussed these recommendations with his top advisors at Blair House, where he was living while the White House was undergoing renovation. During dinner, those present agreed quickly that the DPRK’s attack was equivalent to Hitlerite aggression, and that appeasement was not a viable alternative. But many also voiced concern that if the Communists were unable to subdue the South Koreans, the Soviet Union or China might enter the conflict. All those leaders present expressed the hope that the ROK could defend itself without drastic American assistance.Footnote7 After dinner, Acheson summarized the State Department’s recommendations. He suggested, in addition, that Truman order the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent an attack on either Taiwan or the Chinese mainland. General Omar N. Bradley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), immediately supported State’s proposals. The United States, he stressed, had to draw a line against Soviet expansionism sometime and Korea “was as good an occasion … as anywhere else”. But Bradley advocated only the use of American air and naval power to halt the DPRK’s advance. He opposed deploying American ground forces in Korea because he did not believe that Moscow wanted war with the United States. Naval Chief of Staff Admiral Forrest Sherman joined Bradley in stressing the importance of avoiding a complete commitment of US power. He favored an increase of American advisory personnel in the ROK and reliance on air power to delay the Communist advance. Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg then reminded his colleagues that, while a limited approach was feasible, the United States was not prepared to counteract Soviet military power if Stalin chose to enter the conflict. Frank Pace, Francis Matthews, and Thomas Finletter, the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force respectively, all agreed that, in the absence of Soviet military intervention, US air power was sufficient to preserve the ROK’s survival. Truman’s civilian advisors all stressed the need for some kind of prompt action but were unanimous in opposition to the use of combat troops as wellFootnote8 Such advice only reinforced Truman’s inclination to adopt a restrained approach in his initial response to the Korean crisis. He decided to approve the shipment of all necessary supplies to the ROK, the dispatch of a survey team to Seoul, and the transfer of the Seventh Fleet from the Philippines to Japan. He also instructed the Air Force to prepare plans for the destruction of all Soviet air bases in Asia; the State and Defense Departments would formulate contingency plans for responding to the next probable location of Soviet aggression. The president ordered his advisors to stress that the United States was acting under the authority of the United Nations and would limit its military involvement to protection of American evacuation from the ROK.Footnote9 Truman and his advisors manifested a clear reluctance to take extreme action in the immediate hours after the DPRK assault. Although they perceived in the invasion a Soviet design for world conquest, they sought to counter the threat through relying on limited means. Such a reaction was hardly surprising, since the main thrust of US postwar policy was restraint. Washington would commit its naval and air power alone, thus avoiding the momentous step of dispatching combat troops (Figure 1)Footnote10 However, Truman’s determination that the DPRK’s attack replicated Axis aggression during the 1930s meant he would not allow the conquest of the ROK. If the DPRK threatened to overrun the peninsula, global assumptions would demand a near complete commitment of US power and prestige in the struggle to ensure the survival of the ROK. Figure 1. President Harry S. Truman at home in Independence, Missouri, on Christmas Eve (Source: NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive. https://nara.getarchive.net/media/president-harry-s-truman-at-home-on-christmas-eve-861a07). Figure 1. President Harry S. Truman at home in Independence, Missouri, on Christmas Eve (Source: NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive. https://nara.getarchive.net/media/president-harry-s-truman-at-home-on-christmas-eve-861a07). Display full size At this first Blair House meeting, Truman also affirmed the State Department’s action earlier that day to refer the Korean crisis to the UN Security Council, which had resulted in passage of a resolution calling for a ceasefire and DPRK withdrawal. Despite this show of concern, ROK forces were unable to halt the advance of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) and the battlefield situation continued to deteriorate. On the night of 26 June, Truman convened a second meeting at Blair House. Acheson again opened the discussion and recommended the removal of all restrictions on the use of naval and air power in Korea. The president approved the proposal immediately but emphasized that American operations would not extend north of the 38th parallel (Figure 2). The secretary of state then raised the issue of Taiwan. Truman now decided that the Seventh Fleet should move into the Taiwan Strait. After a brief discussion of future policy at the United Nations, US Army Chief of Staff Collins summarized the battlefield situation in Korea. The ROK, he pessimistically reported, was on the verge of complete collapse. Acheson argued that if Korean efforts at self-defense failed, the United States had to intervene more directly. Truman declared, somewhat vaguely, that “we must do everything we can for the Korean situation for the United Nations”. Bradley and General J. Lawton Collins, the US Army Chief of Staff, assuming that Truman had just indicated willingness to commit combat ground forces, reminded him that such a decision would entail the need for full mobilization. In response, both Truman and Acheson voiced the hope that the United States still could avoid this drastic stepFootnote11 Figure 2. President Truman orders support for the ROK. (Source: Communities Digital News. https://bonniekgoodman.medium.com/otd-in-history-june-27-1950-president-truman-orders-american-troops-to-fight-in-the-korean-war-14a2fc0fd599). Figure 2. President Truman orders support for the ROK. (Source: Communities Digital News. https://bonniekgoodman.medium.com/otd-in-history-june-27-1950-president-truman-orders-american-troops-to-fight-in-the-korean-war-14a2fc0fd599). Display full size Some writers have claimed that by then, Truman had decided to dispatch US combat forces to Korea. They point, for example, to his decisions at the second Blair House meeting that the United States, to demonstrate its resolve, would strengthen its forces in the Philippines and provide more aid to the French to fight the Communists in Indochina (Lowe Citation1986, 162; Kaufman Citation1986, 30). Yet Truman also stated emphatically that “I don’t want war”. His decisions at the second Blair House meeting in truth represented only a minor change in tactics.

Let’s just pause, just for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control - US Representative Barbara Lee, 14 September 2001 The use of force is prohibited in international law. This simple but fundamental legal principle can be obscured in a geo-political context littered with conflict and threatened conflict where the exceptions are more often seen as the rule. Relatedly, there is a tendency to dismiss international law as a ‘marginal enterprise’ at moments of political crisis [1, p26]. This is why, in the immediate wake of the September 11 attacks, legalistic objections to the United States’ use of force against the perpetrators (and enablers) of these attacks could not help but sound reedy and off-key. However, twenty years later, the world is confronted by images of Afghanistan tumbling back under Taliban control, this time against the tragic backdrop of a military operation that cost 175,000 military and civilian lives and more than 3.2 trillion US dollars. It may be thought at this point that international legal arguments come too late. Yet, for international law, ‘hindsight is a necessary vice’.1 The practice of states, even that forged in heated times of war and crisis, can harden into enduring legal principles unless objected to or criticized in its aftermath. In this short essay, we examine the legal justifications for the military intervention in Afghanistan and consider the potential dangers in allowing these justifications to endure as part of the legal framework governing the use of force in international relations. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, often described as the Charter’s cornerstone, provides that ‘All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations’ [2, p.xii–xiii]. In the ordinary course of things, the use of force against a state to achieve regime change, such as seen in Afghanistan in 2001, would be a manifest violation of the Charter. It may even amount to an unlawful use of force warranting higher censure as an act of aggression.2 Yet there are exceptions. First, the prohibition does not cover the situation where the government of a state consents to the use of force by another state within its territory [3]. Second, the Charter establishes a collective security framework, vesting ‘primary responsibility’ in the UN Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security, and allowing the Council to authorize measures including the use of force where ‘necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security’. Third, Article 51 of the Charter notes that nothing in the Charter impairs the right of a state to use force in individual or collective self-defence in the event of an armed attack until the Security Council is able to take necessary measures. These three circumstances—consent, Security Council authorisation, or self-defence—are the only circumstances in which the use of force is not prohibited in international relations. Each of these justifications has its own elements and limitations. The US intervention in Afghanistan was justified on the basis of the doctrine of self-defence and, at least initially, faced few objections.3 Yet despite (or perhaps because of) the initial wide support, US action in Afghanistan has indelibly affected contemporary understandings of the doctrine of self-defence, and generated a number of variants of the traditional doctrine. This has happened to the extent that it has become common to divide analysis of self-defence (and indeed jus ad bellum more broadly) into pre- and post-9/11.4 Christine Gray’s seminal volume on International Law and the Use of Force notes that that ‘the US invasion of Afghanistan…led to a fundamental reappraisal of the law on self-defence’ [4, p200]. Below, we analyse these variants and assess the extent to which they impacted the authority, purpose, expectations, cooperation with and acceptable collateral damage in the context of the Afghanistan intervention. 1 Borrowing from Hilary Mantel’s description of the historian’s situation. 2 See definition in Rome Statute, Art 8 bis. 3 See reference to objections (on the basis of a preference for UN approval) by Cuba, Belarus and the Organization of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers [3, p630–631]. 4 See, for example, the three parts of Use of Force in International Law [4] divided between (I) The Cold War Era; (II) the Post-Cold War Era; and (III) the Post 9/11-Era. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4189376 Hovell and Hughes 3 LSE Public Policy Review DOI: 10.31389/lseppr.53 I. RUSH TO UNILATERAL ACTION: THE ‘FIRST OPTION’ VARIANT ‘Two opportunities stand above all others. First was the chance to convince the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden before the outbreak of war. Second was the opportunity to include the Taliban in the new political settlement. In both cases, the urgency of the moment overcame diplomacy’. - Carter Malkasian, 2021 Prior to 9/11, it was ‘self-evident and generally recognized’ that self-defence was only available as an action of last resort [5]. This ‘last resort’ requirement is a component of the principle of necessity. The most famous articulation of this doctrine derives from the Caroline Affair in 1837. Following this incident on the Niagara River, which involved the United States, Great Britain, and the Canadian independence movement, correspondence between US Secretary of State Daniel Webster and UK Foreign Secretary Lord Ashburton recorded that a state must show ‘a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation’. The ‘last resort’ criteria, or the requirement to show ‘no choice of means’, is usually described in terms of an obligation to establish the non-availability of measures other than the use of force. However, the broader interpretation is that a state can only resort to self-defence when there are no other ‘realistic’ alternatives, including the non-availability of the other justifications for force, such as host state consent or Security Council authorisation. This interpretation suggests a hierarchy between the three available justifications for the use of force: first, state consent; second, Security Council authorisation; and third, self-defence.5 This positioning of self-defence as an option of last resort is seemingly justified by Article 51’s qualification that nothing shall impair the inherent right of self-defence ‘until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security’. A little-discussed aspect of the US response to 9/11 is that it seemingly upended this hierarchy. On 12 September 2001, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1368, which seemed to immediately cede the ground to the United States, recognizing ‘the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with the Charter’. It has been suggested that this reflected a deliberate and strategic preference on the part of the US, which elected for unilateral over multilateral action despite clear Security Council ‘readiness to take all necessary steps’ in Security Council resolution 13686 [6, p.635–636, 7]. This suggestion does not rest upon a sufficiently nuanced assessment of the Council’s reasoning. It is important to recall that in the moment, it was not only the Americans who were deeply shaken, but the international community as well. There had never been a terrorist attack of the magnitude, complexity and scope of 9/11, and even though the US and its allies had been closely tracking al Qaeda since the late 1980’s, their militaries, intelligence services and law enforcement had all missed critical indicators and warnings [8]. Furthermore, the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda had been matters of Security Council concern since 1996 [9]. Following the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the effort assumed global importance, and the Clinton administration worked aggressively through diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement channels to find a way to bring Osama bin Laden to justice [9 p121–126,205–207]. Subsequently, the Security Council passed four resolutions between 1998 and 2001 that specifically cited the threat from al Qaeda and declared the supporting actions of the Taliban government in Afghanistan to be a threat to international peace and security [10–13]. These resolutions were the foundation for the diplomatic activity that immediately followed the 9/11 attacks, including Resolution 1368. They indicate that while willing to act unilaterally, the US was aware that the transnational nature of al Qaeda’s networks and operations still demanded a multilateral approach. 5 According to Bruno Simma’s edited Commentary on the UN Charter, ‘the right of self-defence embodied in Art. 51 is only meant to be of a subsidiary nature’: 804. Adil Haque has gone so far as to describe self-defence as an ‘exception’ to Security Council authorisation: https://www.justsecurity.org/70987/the-united-nations-charterat-75-between-force-and-self-defense-part-two/. 6 Criticism of the US decision not to follow a multilateral approach were made by Cuba, Belarus and the Organization of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers: [6 p630–631]. See related criticism in Delbrück, ‘The Fight Against Global Terrorism: Self-Defence or Collective Security as International Police Action’ (2001) 44 German Yearbook of International Law 9; Fassbender, ‘The UN Security Council and International Terrorism’ in Bianchi, Enforcing International Law Against Terrorists (2004), at 83, 88–89. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4189376 Hovell and Hughes 4 LSE Public Policy Review DOI: 10.31389/lseppr.53 The question remains as to whether the ‘last resort’ threshold had been reached. It is clear that the law enforcement measures authorized in Resolutions 1267 [11] and 1333 [12] had not yet fully been exhausted. Both resolutions authorized the use of measures to halt the funding of Bin Laden’s and al Qaeda’s operations, but ‘there was as yet no coordinated U.S. Governmentwide strategy to track terrorist funding and close down their financial support networks’ [8 p119]. More problematically, there is also a strong counterfactual if we consider the availability of diplomatic options. Although such alternatives appeared to have been exhausted, the urgency of the moment and unprecedented international unity following the 9/11 attacks may have created a new opening for negotiations with the Taliban. According to former Bush administration officials, even though his national security council had concluded that any attack on al Qaeda would have to take out the Taliban as well, President Bush was not initially ready to commit to a course of action that would lead to regime change [8 p315, 14]. Instead, Bush at first maintained his position that if the Taliban would agree to turn al Qaeda leaders over to the US, close all terrorist camps, free foreign prisoners, and comply with UN Security Council resolutions, the US would leave the regime in place [9 p332–333, 14]. By September 18, as Secretary of State Powell lined up support for an eventual invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistani interlocutors reported that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had considered the US proposal, and ‘was not negative on all these points’ [9 p333]. Bush did not expect the Taliban to acquiesce, but in that moment, it was not yet an unrealistic option. With patience and sustained strategic pressure, diplomacy may have worked. Historian Carter Malkasian, a US State Department official in Afghanistan who later served as political advisor to the commander of the NATO forces, exhaustively researched the Taliban’s decisionmaking process in the early days following September 11. Malkasian concludes that while there may never be a definitive answer on whether a diplomatic solution could have been reached, there is strong evidence that–but for a combination of miscommunication, US political imperatives and the Bush administration’s fear of further attacks—a negotiated solution would have been possible [15]. Events overtook such an opportunity. On the evening of September 11, Bush had privately declared that the US would punish not just the perpetrators of the attacks, but those who harboured them as well [9 p330]. Over the days and weeks that followed, his resolve hardened and expanded to encompass the broader aim of ‘the elimination of terrorism as a threat to our way of life’ [9 p331]. Meanwhile, communicating through the Pakistanis, Mullah Omar agreed

Just three Big Tech firms (Microsoft, Google, and Amazon) control about two-thirds of the global market for the cloud computing resources used to train and deploy AI models. They have a lot of the AI talent, the capacity for large-scale innovation, and face few public regulations for their products and activities.

The increasingly centralized control of AI is an ominous sign for the co-evolution of democracy and technology. When tech billionaires and corporations steer AI, we get AI that tends to reflect the interests of tech billionaires and corporations, instead of the general public or ordinary consumers.

Following Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) latest AI Insight Forum, which focused on elections and good governance, all eyes are on the developing intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and democracy. Complementing the bipartisan Senate forum series are the Biden administration’s recent executive order on AI and Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to the United Kingdom to attend the AI Safety Summit. This increased focus on AI comes at a time of heightened attention to the state of democracy in both the United States and globally. In this first part of a new series on the risks and possibilities of the confluence between AI and democracy, we provide an overview of three principal areas where AI may transform democratic governance and its execution. Subsequent installments of the series will offer deeper dives into these topics and policy recommendations for lawmakers. Election administration AI could assist election officials and workers in their critical efforts to oversee the polls, whether in the United States or in democracies around the world. For example, AI could revamp election administration processes to make them more efficient, reliable, and secure. When monitored carefully, AI could identify concerning anomalies in voter lists and voting machines to preempt uncover fraud or disenfranchisement. AI-powered tabulators could scan paper ballots more quickly than poll workers, thereby reducing the time necessary to report election results or to conduct recounts. That quicker clip could help quiet accusations of fraud during close, contentious races like those seen in the wake of the 2020 election, when an influx of mail-in ballots necessitated multi-day counts in several pivotal states.

But election administrators must be wary of possible risks. AI’s capacity to locate and synthesize vast amounts of public data can generate phishing attacks tailored to election officials whose contact information exists in the public domain. If these officials have privileged access to sensitive voter and government data, the integrity of the elections they oversee may be jeopardized if their personal information and administrative duties are exploited by malware or ransomware. AI models could also be written to further suppress and disenfranchise voters by disseminating misinformation or disinformation, particularly to less-informed citizens who may be more vulnerable to baseless election fraud narratives. There also could be partisan biases in the way voter rolls are “cleaned up” using AI, with minority voters being disproportionately targeted. Campaigns and voter education AI is already altering the way candidates for elected office conduct their campaigns in the United States and in other democracies around the globe. New technologies are also reshaping—for better and for worse—how voters locate and consume information about candidates and issues. These shifts present opportunities and risks at every stage leading up to Election Day. Opportunities for AI to democratize, improve, and level the campaign playing field abound. AI tools could lower financial barriers to entry for first-time and underfunded candidates. Digital fundraising mechanisms could benefit from AI-powered streamlining. Candidates may also avail themselves of targeted advertisements that more effectively reach undecided voters. That has the knock-on effect of better educating the electorate about their options at the ballot box. AI can be used effectively and transparently by election administration officials to track and report on harmful hate speech that unfairly tilts the playing field for candidates and impacts voter decision making. Conversely, AI may worsen the flood of misinformation and disinformation now typical of election season. AI equips illiberal nonstate actors and autocracies with an array of comparatively low-cost, unmanned tools by which adversaries may pry the electorate further apart, fueling caustic polarization and internal destabilization. Political bots, deepfakes, and other AI-generated visuals have already scrambled pre-election information ecosystems in democracies across the globe. AI’s capacity to rapidly generate “pink slime,” news sites comprised completely of fake news, exhibits its potential to turbocharge preexisting election interference tactics. The risk of AI-fueled informational chaos grows more acute as many democracies march towards high-stakes elections in 2024. Citizen engagement and participation In addition to elections and voting, other dimensions of democratic governance stand to benefit and face challenges from the AI revolution, domestically and internationally. New technologies will help citizens voice their opinions, organize others with similar alignments, and act on their priorities beyond the ballot box. However, those same technologies may also allow bad actors to camouflage their machinations as genuine public sentiment. AI could further democratize the public comment process, a cornerstone of public influence over policy- and rulemaking. Machine learning can collect and summarize an individual’s interests and may eventually match those priorities with specific issues on which regulatory agencies are receiving public comment. Generative AI can assist both activists and seasoned politicians at the national and local levels to make their comments more persuasive for various audiences. Such technology may also bolster citizens’ understanding of complex legislation that their elected officials are considering by simplifying legislative text and tracking their representatives’ votes. The flip side is that advocacy groups or individuals looking to misrepresent public opinion may find an ally in AI. AI-fueled programs, like ChatGPT, can fabricate letters to elected officials, public comments, and other written endorsements of specific bills or positions that are often difficult to distinguish from those written by actual constituents. These fabrications—and the speed and volume at which they can be created—may be used to generate the appearance of public consensus on a given issue and pressure legislators to act on a desired agenda. Much worse, voice and image replicas harnessed from generative AI tools can also mimic candidates and elected officials. These tactics could give rise to voter confusion and degrade confidence in the electoral process if voters become aware of such scams. The stakes are high to identify emerging risks and rewards at the confluence of AI and democracy. Next year, highly consequential elections will take place in the United States and in countries around the world, together representing more than 3.5 billion people. Anti-democratic actors and autocrats will seek every opportunity to shake confidence in democracy, targeting the systems that ensure free and fair elections and good governance. Democratic governments, policymakers, and election advocates are responding with best practices and necessary words of warning. The Biden administration’s aforementioned AI Executive Order has been lauded as a promising starting point for a top-down approach to these new technologies. AI-friendly and -wary lawmakers alike have begun setting their sights on a bipartisan AI regulatory regime. And civil society has an important role to play, demonstrated by the work of organizations like the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, the Brennan Center for Justice, Public Citizen, and Brookings (which does its own extensive work on the subject). They, along with many others, are marshalling their technical expertise and commitment to democracy to provide cutting-edge guidance to local, state, and federal regulators. Minimizing the disruptive effects of the AI revolution and maximizing its positive democratic potential is an imperative for the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election and other similarly pivotal contests. But the need for effective, transparent strategies and guidelines goes beyond next year. AI-powered tools are in their infancy. Their impacts will likely reach every corner and function of government, from how agencies collect data to how elections are run to how voters register to vote and cast their ballots. As technologies evolve, policymakers, advocates, and citizens will need to keep up to ensure AI is leveraged as a force for a better and more inclusive democracy.

MORE THAN A WHOLE CYCLE OF THE CHINESE ZODIAC HAS ELAPSED SINCE the special issue of Social Research, "China in Transition," was published in 2006. After 12 years, China's transition is not towards democracy but towards a kind of neo-totalitarianism. During this period, Liu Xiaobo, who had written in that issue on the growing influence of civil society, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and died in prison, while his wife was placed under house arrest for almost a decade. The year 2008 was a watershed, as the financial crisis dealt a serious blow to the Washington Consensus, while the successful organization of the Olympic Games by Beijing impressed the world. The Chinese leadership used this opportunity to become more assertive on the international scene, presenting its regime as a credible alternative to Western democracy and the market economy that had led the world to an unprecedented crisis. Liu Xiaobo's dream of a strong civil society capable of putting an end to the Communist Party's dictatorship has vanished.

Donald Trump's election, the success of populist candidates in Central and Eastern Europe, and the advent of a coalition government in Italy that includes the far right have dealt a further blow to liberal democracy: Francis Fukuyama's expectation of "the end of history" has faded. Whereas in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union, there had been an attempt at reconstructing an international order according to the principles of democracy and multilateralism, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, conflicts have multiplied, [End Page 203] multilateralism has lost its luster, and the rise of nationalism in many parts of the world has challenged the mere idea of an international community. The ascents to power of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary have signaled the rise of a new era of authoritarianism. Xi Jinping's rule is one of the best examples of this new trend.

NATO’s adaptation effort will likely focus on the justification given by the Russian President Vladimir Putin on 21 February for extending military support to the Donbas breakaway republics, which preceded his invasion of Ukraine three days later. Putin in his speech lamented the allegedly artificial land drawings during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which, according to him, had bereaved Russia of its rightful lands from when it was a tsarist empire. Although Putin mostly referred to Ukraine, his speech gives reason enough to suspect that he may have territorial ambitions in other parts of the former Russian Empire, particularly in Estonia and Latvia, which both have sizeable Russian-speaking minorities. Russia’s pre-invasion demand that NATO withdraws its forces stationed in Eastern Europe after 1997 gives suspicion that it could also threaten Lithuania and Poland on the border with the Kaliningrad exclave. Russia poses a military threat that cannot be defended against with the current NATO forward presence in Poland and the Baltic States (multi-national battlegroups), which is meant as a tripwire for war with the alliance but not to deny Russian land grabs. Not only are the costs much higher of having to liberate than to defend territory, but there will also be doubt about NATO’s resolve to do so if Russia would threaten to use nuclear weapons after its successful seizure of territory. One should not deduct from Russia’s poor military performance in Ukraine that it would perform similarly in a conflict with NATO and that it would not be able to improve. To eliminate doubts about NATO’s ability to defend against a Russian attack without risking significant territorial loss, the alliance needs to balance out its current personnel and equipment understrength. The alliance needs to do so based on the traditional 1:3 ratio relative to the Russian forces in its Western Military District as well as in Belarus, whose participation cannot be excluded in the case of a NATO-Russia war. At its current force levels, it is urgent that NATO redress its understrength in tanks and artillery units. All this will likely require NATO to permanently station substantial forces in Poland and the Baltic States, thus in practice abandoning the NATO-Russia Founding Act, which was agreed in 1997 to prevent the re-emergence of post-Cold War tension but whose word Russia has now definitively broken. Some allies may wish not to formally abandon the Act to maintain hope in the revival of the post-Cold War spirit with a different leadership in Moscow. Given that Russia seems unlikely to conquer all of Ukraine, NATO may perhaps keep its recent battlegroup deployments in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, which share no land border with Russia, until there is more clarity about how the Ukraine war could end. NATO will also consider its naval presence in the Black Sea depending on how much coastal territory Russia will be able to take and hold in Ukraine. The likelihood of Finnish and Swedish NATO memberships poses additional questions about the alliance’s deterrence capability. The uncertainty about possible Russian reactions in the time between the two countries’ membership application submissions and ratification by 30 allies relies on bilateral security assurances from strong NATO allies, the United States or the United Kingdom. If NATO wishes to treat its exposed eastern allies equally, it must eliminate doubt about its willingness to defend Finland and Sweden in the eventuality of a Russian attack. Nowhere is the challenge bigger than on the 1300-long Finnish border. Finland has a strong army and strategic depth by comparison to the Baltic States, which may not require the alliance to station substantial permanent forces on its soil but perhaps a tripwire similar to what currently exists in the Baltic States and Poland. NATO will also have to decide whether to station ground and air forces in Sweden, for instance in Gotland as part of the enhancement of its overall presence in the Baltic Sea.

Several of my correspondents (including Messrs. Rowen, Swaine, Khalilzad, Menon, Ellings, O’Hanlon, and Wimbush) note that China could undergo fundamental domestic political change in the years ahead, perhaps becoming fragmented, chaotic, and weak or, alternatively, transforming itself into a functioning, stable democracy. In the first instance, China’s leaders might be deprived of the ability to challenge the United States; in the second, they would presumably lack the inclination to do so. I do not dismiss the possibility of serious unrest in China—although, for purposes of discussion, I did explicitly assume that the country would remain essentially intact over the next several decades. But what internal weakness might imply for external behavior is far from clear. As Enders Wimbush suggests, an unstable and unpredictable China could still pose serious problems for the United States. And there can be little doubt that a “failed” Chinese state would present its neighbors with enormous challenges: it could swamp them with refugees, cheap weapons, and pollutants, even if it no longer threatened to dominate them. And what of a mellower, more democratic China?1 This is an outcome devoutly to be wished, of course, but one that does not seem likely to come quickly or without considerable upheaval. Regimes in transition from strict authoritarianism to greater political openness have historically been prone to bouts of aggressive nationalism. As China’s elites compete more openly for power among themselves, and as they feel increasingly compelled to justify their continuing collective rule to the Chinese people, they may resort to antiforeign sentiment and even to external adventures as a means of mobilizing domestic support. Finally, it should be noted that, in its early stages, even a more fully democratic China could prove prickly, assertive, and difficult to deal with. Anyone who doubts this should consider the early history of the United States. The balance of power will balance. William E. Odom, Henry S. Rowen, Dov Zakheim, Rajan Menon, and Michael O’Hanlon all suggest that other Asian countries will join with the United States in order to offset China’s rising power. This is a strong possibility, and indeed there is evidence that it is already occurring. Continued movement in this direction cannot, however, be taken entirely for granted. The balance of power is not an automatic equilibrating mechanism. I agree with Alan Dupont that the willingness of other countries to cast in their lot with us will depend on their own estimation of our power, steadiness, and seriousness of purpose. How we act, and how well we counter Chinese efforts to raise doubts about our role, will be critical. As both Paul S. Giarra and Mr. Wimbush suggest, moreover, the solidity and permanence of our most important regional alliances cannot simply be assumed. Japan is in the midst of wrenching economic, social, and political changes that could well have a dramatic impact on its foreign and defense policies. North and South Korea are likely again to become one country, and perhaps sooner rather than later. A reunified Korea could choose to stay aligned with the United States, but it might also shift toward a more neutral stance or even “tilt” toward China. The new Bush administration faces few tasks more important than preserving close ties to our two key democratic allies in Northeast Asia. The Chinese military will continue to lag behind. It is true that, in almost every respect, China’s armed forces are today greatly inferior to those of the United States. But it would be dangerously complacent to assume that this will continue to be the case indefinitely. Although Beijing may have “other priorities,” as Mr. Rowen asserts, it does not follow that it “is not investing heavily in its military.” The exact scale of the expenditure may be a subject of debate, but there is little question that the PRC is devoting considerable resources to the various missions that I described in my article: building up theater ballistic missiles with which to intimidate its neighbors, strengthening its ability to strike directly at the United States, and acquiring the elements of an “anti-access” capability that could complicate and raise the costs of any American attempt to project power into the Western Pacific. China may be decades away from building a force that could challenge the United States at any point on the globe, if it even wishes to do so. But it may not be nearly so far from building one that would enable it to pose a serious threat to U.S. interests and forces in East Asia. Taiwan is the most obvious sore spot and danger point here. Whatever the objective balance of military power, there is also the ever-present danger of miscalculation. Instead of resting on our laurels, we should be closely tracking the Chinese military buildup and, equally important, gaining a better understanding of how China’s leaders assess the prospects for a successful use of force. If we fail to attend adequately to these tasks we risk some very unpleasant surprises. China’s economic diplomacy is neither new nor worrisome. Messrs. Rowen and Dupont both note that China is hardly unique in its efforts to use economic instruments for achieving strategic objectives. This is true, but it is also largely beside the point. The use of such instruments may not be an entirely new thing under the sun, but it is a new thing for China. The question is toward what ends, and how effectively, China will employ its newfound leverage. As I suggested in my article, a fast-growing China may try to use its increasing weight to constrict America’s influence in Asia, while at the same time reducing its own vulnerability to American economic pressures. Whether or not the Chinese will be able to carry this off remains to be seen. But the larger point is worth repeating: dealing with a strategic competitor that has significant economic cards to play will present new challenges to the United States. James R. Lilley notes that its economic links with Taiwan may have a restraining influence on mainland China. This is an important point and one that is often lost in abstract, general discussions of the allegedly pacifying effects of global economic interdependence. But the situation prevailing across the Taiwan Strait also underlines the plausibility of international relationships that mix a measure of economic cooperation with a strong strain of strategic competition. This too is something foreign to our recent experience. During the cold war, we became accustomed to the idea that the world could be divided cleanly into two camps: friends who were both our military allies and our principal trading partners, and foes with whom we competed militarily and traded hardly at all. Mixed relations, however, are far closer to the historical norm. To take one troubling example: prior to the outbreak of the World War I, Britain and Germany were among each other’s most important trading partners. Dealing effectively with China will require us to broaden our conceptual categories, instead of trying, as we have been doing for the better part of the last decade, to deny the PRC’s competitive behavior in order to squeeze it into the “friendly” box. Rivalry is not inevitable, but our actions could help make it so. Is an intense, open struggle for mastery in Asia inevitable? No, and I said so as clearly as I could at the beginning and again at the end of my essay. Although I believe that, especially in the military realm (and, in a more muted way, in the diplomatic and economic domains) a competition of sorts is already under way, I do not think it is somehow destined to accelerate or to blossom in all the ways that I speculate it could. Might we, through our behavior, make an intense rivalry more likely? To one degree or another, Victor D. Cha, Zalmay Khalilzad, Dov Zakheim, Richard J. Ellings, and Michael O’Hanlon all worry about the possibility of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Treat China as an enemy, says the conventional wisdom, and it will become one. There is something to this line of reasoning, though not, in my view, as much as is usually claimed. For one thing, there may be powerful internal forces—political, ideological, and bureaucratic—propelling China toward a more confrontational stance, regardless of how inoffensive and accommodating we try to be. China may become an enemy even if we redouble our efforts to treat it as a friend. Also deserving closer scrutiny is the notion that only by taking a soft line can we discourage aggressive external behavior and promote desirable domestic change. The history of our dealings with the Soviet Union during the latter stages of the cold war would certainly suggest otherwise (although the two situations differ in many respects). To the current Chinese leadership, we need to make clear the futility of stepped-up competition (to say nothing of overt aggression), while at the same time making plain to the Chinese people the benefits of continuing economic and political liberalization. It is for these reasons that I favor a mixed approach along the lines laid out by Mr. Khalilzad: continued trade and investment—albeit with renewed steps to slow China’s efforts to acquire certain key technologies—combined with serious, sustained, and unchecked efforts to strengthen our alliances, improve our military capabilities, and maintain a balance of power in Asia that is favorable to our interests. Engagement, yes; but from a position of strength. Is it possible, finally, that merely by talking and perhaps even by thinking about a full-blown Sino-American rivalry we may increase the probability of its actually coming to pass? This is the clear implication of Michael Swaine’s letter. Mr. Swaine worries that “ordinary observers,” unable to distinguish between descriptions of present reality and “hair-raising scenarios” of the future, will conclude that “an intense geostrategic rivalry is virtually inevitable, and . . . respond accordingly.” While I am flattered by the thought that my article could somehow change the course of history, I very much doubt that it, or a hundred more like it, will have any such effect. On the other hand, I am disturbed by the suggestion that we ought to avoid discussing unpleasant possibilities for fear that someone (presumably our political representatives and “ordinary” fellow citizens) might get the wrong idea. Acknowledging real dangers is a necessary first step to avoiding them, as well as to preparing to cope with them if they should nevertheless come to pass. Refusing or neglecting to do so, it seems to me, is a far more likely formula for disaster.